1) Field of the Invention
The present invention is concerned with an improvement to the kind of merchandise display racks known in the trade as "gondolas", which improvement makes such racks much stronger and thus suitable to bear higher loads.
2) Brief Description of the Prior Art
Gondolas are merchandise display racks that are widely used in retail stores especially food stores, to store and display the merchandises offered for sale. Such racks that are most of time disposed in island formation in the stores, basically comprise two or more vertical posts made of rigid metal, such as steel. Each post has a bottom end and a pair of front and rear surfaces formed with a plurality of vertical aligned apertures for use to detachably secure merchandise shelves through angular brackets in an overhanging fashion.
Two or more horizontal tie bars also made of metal, are used for rigidly interconnecting each pair of posts adjacent each other in spaced apart relationship.
The posts interconnected by the tie-bars are mounted onto the floor by means of transversal footings connected to their bottom ends and sized and positioned to hold the posts vertical even when shelves are secured thereto and loaded with merchandises to be displayed. Each footing is defined by at least one half-bases having a vertical inner edge from which hooks projects, and a vertical outer edge. Each half-bases are rigidly connectable to the post adjacent the bottom end thereof by insertion of its hooks into the apertures made in the front or rear surfaces of this post. When two half-based connected to one post, they horizontally project away in opposite directions from the front and rear surfaces of the post and act as symmetrical stabilizers for holding this post vertical.
This basic structure is quite efficient. However, it has been found that in use, the half-bases and more particularly the hooks that project from such half-bases, must be oversized to sustain shearing forces to which they are subjected, especially when the shelves are loaded in an unbalanced manner. Indeed, in such a case, the posts of the rack are deflected on one side by the unbalanced load and the upper portions of the inner edges of the half-bases that extend on this one side are pressed against the corresponding surfaces of the posts and thus subjected to compression, while simultaneously a substantial tension is exerted through the same posts onto the hooks that project from the lower portions of the inner edges of the same half-bases and are thus subjected to a shearing force.
Such a deflection and resulting shearing forces may be very substantial and limit the load that may be "safely" carried by the gondola. Thus, for example, with a standard 8' high gondola the deflection may be as high as 9/16" with 2 000 lbs. loaded onto one side only.